Hoverboard Powered Sofa Is Fun And A Bit Dangerous

August 2, 2022 by Danie Conradie 8 Comments

Discarded hoverboards are a great source of free high torque motors for hacking. This can include crazy but fun projects like this hoverboard-driven IKEA sofa, as demonstrated by [Bitluni] and his friends at xHain Hackerspace in Berlin.

With a couple of dead hoverboards in various conditions and a working e-bike battery, the group started exploring different options to put together a usable drivetrain. The first attempt involved commanding the motor drivers directly by intercepting communication from the gyro-based controller. The 9-bit communication protocol was a tough nut to crack, so they tried (and failed) to use the gyro-boards directly as the controllers. In the process of researching they discovered someone had created alternative firmware for the hoverboard controllers to allow control with a Wii Nunchuck. There is even a web-based config tool for compiling the firmware.

With some wood spacers screwed to the bottom of the sofa, the hoverboard motors could be attached by simply screwing their enclosure to the bottom of the couch and adding a section of PVC pipe between the halves for wiring. Caster wheels were added to the rear corners of the sofa to complete the chassis. The motors were very sensitive to control inputs on the Nunchuck, so riding the couch tended to rapidly turn into a rodeo event. The couch also wasn’t made to carry its load on the outer corners, so it had to be reinforced with plywood after it started cracking.

We’ve seen plenty of hacks that involve hoverboard motors, including an electric skateboard with mecanum wheels and a surprisingly practical e-bike conversion.

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Arduino Learns The Martial Arts With Nunchucks Input Device

January 26, 2021 by Al Williams 11 Comments

There is a boring part of every computer introduction class that shows how a computer is made up of input, output, and processing. Maybe it wouldn’t be so boring if the input device was a nunchuck. [Brian Lough] thinks so and he belligerently asserts that nunchucks are the best input device ever. With a simple connection to a Wii controller and an associated library, you get access to an analog joystick, two buttons, and an accelerometer.

The nunchuck is meant to plug into a Wii controller and the connection is I²C, so that’s trivial to interface to an Arduino or other small microcontroller. The only issue is making the connection. We might have just snipped the wires, but [Brian] prefers to use a small breakout board that plugs into the stock connector and provides solder points for your own cable. There are options for the breakout boards, and [Brian] has his own design that you can get from OSHPark for about a buck for three boards. You can also just jam wire into the connector, but that’s not always robust.

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Building A Self-Balancing Robot Made Easy

June 3, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 14 Comments

Not only has [Joop Brokking] built an easy to make balancing robot but he’s produced an excellent set of plans and software for anyone else who wants to make one too. Self-balancers are a milestone in your robot building life. They stand on two-wheels, using a PID control loop to actuate the two motors using data from some type of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). It sounds simple, but when starting from scratch there’s a lot of choices to be made and a lot of traps to fall into. [Joop’s] video explains the basic principles and covers the reasons he’s done things the way he has — all the advice you’d be looking for when building one of your own.

He chose steppers over cheaper DC motors because this delivers precision and avoids issues when the battery voltage drops. His software includes a program for getting a calibration value for the IMU. He also shows how to set the drive current for the stepper controllers. And he does all this clearly, and at a pace that’s neither too fast, nor too slow. His video is definitely worth checking out below.

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Electric Bubblegum Board

October 20, 2014 by Marsh 17 Comments

The Mini Maker Faire in Atlanta was packed with exciting builds and devices, but [Andrew’s] Electric Bubblegum Boards stood out from the rest, winning the Editor’s Choice Award. His boards first emerged on Endless Sphere earlier this summer, with the goal of hitting all the usual e-skateboard offerings of speed, range, and weight while dramatically cutting the cost of materials.

At just over 12 pounds, the boards are lightweight and fairly compact, but have enough LiFePO4’s fitted to the bottom to carry a rider 10 miles on a single charge. A Wii Nunchuck controls throttle, cruise control, and a “boost” setting for bursts of speed. The best feature of this e-skateboard, however, is the use of 3D-printed parts. The ABS components not only help facilitate the prototyping process, but also permit a range of customization options. Riders can reprint parts as necessary, or if they want to just change things up.

[Andrew’s] board is nearing the 11th hour over at his Kickstarter page, so swing by to see a production video made for potential backers, or stick around after the break for some quick progress and demo videos.

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Another Homebrew Segway Clone Comes In At Under $300

March 19, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Matt Turner] tipped us off back in January about his homemade Segway project. Unfortunately that message slipped through the cracks but we’re glad he sent in a reminder after reading Friday’s feature an a different 2-wheeled balancer.

We like it that he refers to this project as being on the budget of a graduate student with a young family. We certainly understand where he’s coming from, and we hope he can ride this to job interviews to show them he truly lives engineering. The control circuitry is a bit higher-end than we’re used to seeing. He chose a Cypress CY8C29466 SoC to control the device. But the sensors are a common choice, using the Wii Motion Plus and Wii Nunchuk for the gyroscope and accelerometer they contain. This is a no-brainer since the sensors are high-quality, cheap and available locally, and communicate of the standard I2C protocol.

When looking for motors [Matt] was happy to find an old electric wheelchair on Craig’s List. This also gave him a gear box, wheels, and tires. He added a pair of motor drivers, with his own alterations to suppress feedback. Sounds like they run a little hot because he plans to add cooling fans to them in the future. But this first iteration is up and running quite well as you can see in the clip after the break.

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Quadcopter Build Ready For First Flight

February 8, 2012 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Abhimanyu Kumar] has been hard at work building and posting about his quadcopter. So far he’s published ten installments for this build, letting us relive the adventure vicariously. But it’s number 11 that we’re really excited about as he plans to share the first free-flight footage in that one.

The bug was planted in his brain after hearing that a quadcopter was used to shoot some of the footage in Spiderman 2. He wanted one to call his very own but the cost of a ready-made unit was out of his league. So he decided to build one instead. The first version uses aluminum bracket for the cross making up the motor mounts. He added LEDs to liven things up and even made a demo video of the thing tied to a table (no IMU yet so free flight would be fatal). After this stepping stone he decided to go with a Wii Motion Plus and Wii Nunchuck as the positioning feedback sensors. There is also a body redesign with helps lighten the load.

It’s a fun project, and we can’t wait to see where he goes from here!

Wii Nunchuck On An 80s Computer

January 16, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 3 Comments

For a computer that debuted in the early 80s the MSX was a very respectable machine. Of course these were the days that superimposing graphics over a video was an amazing feat, but [Danjovic] and [Igor] are still having fun with their boxen. They designed a software interface for the Wii Nunchuck (translation) on their trusty MSX computer.

The plug coming out the back of a standard Wiimote is just a simple I2C bus. Many things can be done with this port from plugging in ancient controllers to controlling robots. [Danjovic] and [Igor] managed to write a routine in Basic that converts the I2C data coming out of the Nunchuck to data the MSX can understand without any modification of the hardware whatsoever.

All the guys needed to plug the Nunchuck into the MSX was a voltage divider and a few pull-up resistors between the computer and controller. They got data from both buttons, the joystick and the accelerometer in the Nunchuck and made a small program to display some sprites on the screen to demonstrate this. Check that out after the break.

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